Guest guest Posted August 13, 2001 Report Share Posted August 13, 2001 The other day I referred to karma yoga, bhakti yoga, and jnana yoga as paths to enlightenment through action, emotion, and thinking, respectively. In Jack Engler's excellent article (1986) on meditation and psychological development, I just came across a reference to raja yoga as involving " experimentation " . Can anyone explain what that means? Will anyone explain what that means? Gary Engler, Jack (1986), " Therapeutic Aims in Psychotherapy and Meditation: Developmental Stages in the Representation of Self " . In Transformations of Consciousness: Conventional and Contemplative Perspectives on Development, edited by Ken Wilber, Jack Engler and Daniel P. Brown. Boston: Shambhala. Reprinted from Engler (1984), 25-61 -- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted August 13, 2001 Report Share Posted August 13, 2001 Hi Gary, As you know, Raja Yoga is the yoga of Patanjali. What distinguishes it from other Hindu paths is the emphasis on inward or concentrative meditation (it's similar to samatha in the Theravada tradition). The second sentence of Patanjali's book is famous because it sums up the whole path so well: " Yoga is the cessation of movements of the mind. " An accurate epithet for Raja Yoga is, " Yoga of mind control. " It's a pretty big stretch from " mind control " to " experimentation, " but I can think of a plausible explanation of how Dr. Engler got there. Here's my hypothesis. Raja Yoga was introduced to the United States, more or less, by Swami Vivekananda in the 1890s. The way he chose to present it made a deep impression and has been echoed by Western writers for decades. I think Dr. Engler's " experimentation " is probably one of those echos. The swami was a tremendously effective public speaker and like any good speaker, he tried to describe the thing he was promoting in a way that stressed its resemblance to something that his audience already esteemed highly: he tried to make Raja Yoga seem scientific. (Science was very cool in the 1890s. Nowadays, New Age propagandists take the opposite tack!) In his speeches at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, which made him an American celebrity, the swami took the following line: Yoga is a form of religion. But most religions require you to accept their teachings based on somebody else's experiences: the experiences of saints, for example, or of Jesus Christ. Yoga is different because it teaches *you* to have those experiences. You need take nothing on faith. Everything you come to believe is founded on empiricism. Therefore it is experiential and scientific. Extrapolating slightly, the techniques that it teaches can be regarded as " experiments. " (He may actually say that somewhere, but I'm flipping quickly through his speeches to refresh my memory and don't see the word " experiment. " ) I don't have time to look for a really good quote but maybe this one will do: " The teachers of the science of Raja-yoga, therefore, declare not only that religion is based upon the experiences of ancient times, but also that no man can be religious until he has had the same experiences himself. Raja-yoga is the science which teaches us how to get these experiences. " (Vivekananda: The Yogas and Other Works, tr. Nikhilananda, 1953, p. 582.) You mentioned the other day the problem that arises when description and explanation are conflated. Here we have description mixed with sales talk. (I mean nothing derogatory, I'm glad that Swami Vivekananda sold Raja Yoga so effectively in the West.) The reason these remarks fail as description is that they don't distinguish Raja Yoga from any other yoga: all yogas are recipes for gaining direct subjective experiences. Nevertheless Swami Vivekananda's remarks were repeated by other authors until thousands of popular books in the West described Raja Yoga as " scientific yoga " or yoga based on experiements. (I'm not sufficiently well-read in this field to be absolutely sure this trend began with Vivekananda, but I think it did.) I hate to suggest this explanation for Dr. Engler's remark, because I have the greatest respect for him, but I can't think of any other. Even Homer nods. Regards, rob - " Gary Schouborg " <garyscho " Realization " <Realization >; " Liberation Group () " <libn > Monday, August 13, 2001 2:30 PM Help, please. > The other day I referred to karma yoga, bhakti yoga, and jnana yoga as paths > to enlightenment through action, emotion, and thinking, respectively. In > Jack Engler's excellent article (1986) on meditation and psychological > development, I just came across a reference to raja yoga as involving > " experimentation " . Can anyone explain what that means? Will anyone explain > what that means? > > Gary > > Engler, Jack (1986), " Therapeutic Aims in Psychotherapy and Meditation: > Developmental Stages in the Representation of Self " . In Transformations of > Consciousness: Conventional and Contemplative Perspectives on Development, > edited by Ken Wilber, Jack Engler and Daniel P. Brown. Boston: Shambhala. > Reprinted from Engler (1984), 25-61 -- > > > ..........INFORMATION ABOUT THIS LIST.......... > > Email addresses: > Post message: Realization > Un: Realization- > Our web address: http://www.realization.org > > By sending a message to this list, you are giving > permission to have it reproduced as a letter on > http://www.realization.org > ................................................ > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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